


Those were the Days

by Prochytes



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-11
Updated: 2014-04-11
Packaged: 2018-01-19 01:06:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1449628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prochytes/pseuds/Prochytes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Coulson and May, across five decades of a changing universe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Those were the Days

**Author's Note:**

> Small spoilers to 1x09: “Repairs”. Originally posted on LJ in 2014.

1961 was a heady time. Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, but to be young was very Heaven. A neophyte agent, with Kennedy’s Inaugural Address still ringing in his ears ( _Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days, nor in the life of this Administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin._ ) might well be forgiven for a moment of carelessness while handling an 0-8-4. That, at least, was what Phil Coulson was hoping. 

“So, what did the artefact look like before you dropped it?” asked the man from Internal Affairs, once the medics had given him the all-clear.

“A crystal, sir. A purple crystal. I think that it might have been an icosahedron.” 

“And the other rookie – she took the brunt of the blast from it, too?”

“Yes.” Coulson’s brow creased in worry. “The medics said that she’s OK. Is that right, sir? I didn’t even catch her name.”

“Relax, Coulson. Agent May is fine. You’d better hope she’s chatty, though. The two of you are going to have a _very_ long time to talk.”

“What do you mean, sir?”

“Ah. The medics haven’t briefed you yet. Something in the blast from that exploding crystal has fundamentally altered your body chemistry. If the analysis of your blood-work is right – and Doctor MacTaggert doesn’t make many mistakes – you and Agent May are now ageing at something under half the usual rate. Your life expectancy should be somewhere in the region of a hundred and thirty years.”

“How… how is that even possible, sir?”

“We don’t know. In any event, the nature of your condition has been classified Level Five. In due course, we’ll start falsifying your birth-records. And we’ll move the two of you around a lot, so no one notices. On the subject of movement, I’m here to brief you about the dinosaurs.”

“Dinosaurs?”

“Yes. You and Agent May will be investigating dinosaurs. You both leave for Mexico tomorrow.”

“There are dinosaurs in Mexico?”

“Certainly not, Agent.”

“Oh.” 

“That would be silly.”

“Of course, sir.”

“Mexico’s a staging post. The dinosaurs are in Antarctica. Ever heard of the Savage Land?”

“Fairly sure that’s not in an atlas, sir.”

“Throw away the Atlas, son. It’s time to credit marvels.”

***

During the Seventies, The Enclave grew a lot of clones. Coulson grew a moustache. Neither experiment was subsequently repeated.

It was a decade of excitement. This was often reflected in the punctuation.

“The **myriad** Maggia troops of **Madam Masque** beset and **bedevil** us, Agent!!” announced the voice in his ear.

“Copy that,” said Coulson, who had dropped his pen. He rummaged around with his foot on the grilling in an effort to locate it. Anyone with an ounce of sense at S.H.I.E.L.D. avoided a stationery request if remotely possible. Grenades were easier to requisition than biros. 

“It is allotted **to** you, Phil Coulson – and to **Agent Melinda May** \- that you should stand alone **against** this **sickening tide** …”

“Uh-huh,” said Coulson. His toe had encountered a wad of chewing-gum. Perhaps biros could be reclassified as grenades. Or maybe Pym and the other Science guys could make biros that _were_ grenades. Had to be worth a shot. 

“… **else** , this very day… **S.H.I.E.L.D MUST SURELY FALL!!!!** ”

“Copy that. Over and out.” Coulson gave up momentarily on the biro, and glanced at the other side of the boiler-room. “Has it struck you that Mission Control has been getting a bit… grandiloquent lately, May?”

“Could be,” said May. She was hanging upside-down from a cat-walk to set a charge.

“SciTech need to look at the new comms, too. Some words are coming through on them much more clearly than others.”

“Incoming.”

“Speaking of SciTech,” Coulson continued, three mooks later, “I asked them if they had got anywhere with explaining our purple crystal.”

“What did they say?”

“They’re fairly sure now that it was all to do with gamma radiation.” Coulson retrieved the biro, which he had spotted on the floor next to one of the groaning mooks. He looked pensive. “Does it bother you, May? Knowing that the two of us may outlive everyone we’ve ever known?”

“We’re S.H.I.E.L.D,” May said, as she swung herself back into a standing position. “We won’t.”

***

In the Eighties, everybody wanted to rule the world, or destroy the world, or steal bits of the world to build a different world. A surprising number of these schemes involved New York City. 

“What’s with the bruises?” asked Coulson.

May frowned. “Slugfest with a ninja in Hell’s Kitchen. We were interrupted.”

“If I had to lay a bet on where in the world Melinda May would meet her match, I don’t think I’d have settled on Midtown West.”

“Greeks bearing gifts.”

“Didn’t you just say that you were fighting a ninja?”

“She was a Greek ninja.”

“How is that even poss…?”

“You make the mistake of searching our lives for sense, Phil. You always have.”

“I guess.” Coulson looked out across the Hudson. “SciTech have changed their tune about the crystal. Apparently, it wasn’t gamma rays. It was the Power Cosmic.”

“That’s a thing?”

“So it seems. ‘Power Cosmic.’ Huh. Very cruel place to abandon a defenceless adjective.”

“Hmm.”

“Does this mean that we owe our longevity to some mysterious godlike entity that probably speaks French as its first language?”

He wondered whether he would ever learn the art of reading her silences. The first quarter of a century had seen little progress. He sighed. 

“So, do you need a lift back to Manhattan for the rematch?”

***

The Nineties were a trying period, over which Coulson later preferred to draw a decent veil.

“I’ve found the name of the Gifted we’re pursuing,” said May. “It’s grimdark.”

Coulson winced. “Aren’t they all, these days?”

“No – it’s _actually_ grimdark. First name ‘Grym’, with a ‘y’. Last name ‘Darkk’, with two ‘k’s.”

“I see. What have our nanotech-extended lives become, May?”

“Nanotech? What happened to the Power Cosmic?”

“SciTech have modified their hypothesis again.”

“There’s a surprise. This feud of theirs with Operations has to stop, by the way.”

“Agreed. The stunts they’ve been pulling with Inventory are being noticed. This gun I’m holding looks like a Cubist sculpture. It’s longer than you are. And what they’ve done to your cat-suit can’t be comfortable.”

“No human being has ever needed this many pouches. I haven’t seen my feet since the fall of the Berlin Wall.” May shielded her eyes against the sun. “Eyeball on the target.”

“Are you sure it’s… Oh. Yes. Definitely him. My word. That’s… a _lot_ of hair.”

“It is. And very…. extreme upper-body development. I wonder how he gets through narrow door-frames?”

“Perhaps he teleports. Cover me; I’m going in.”

***

In Bahrain (the wet night air on her face like the tears of a forgotten god, as the voices she had stopped frayed into silence), she learnt that they could fall.

In a metal vault that twisted like a knife in the gut of the wounded sky, he learnt that they could die. 

There was an intermission.

***

“Skye calls us ‘Mom and Dad’ when she thinks we’re not listening.”

“I’m aware.”

“How do you think she would react if she knew that we’re actually old enough to be her grand-parents?”

“OMG, they only look _semi_ -old, but they, like, remember the end of World War Two!! It’s totally Tolkien.”

“That’s a terrible impression of Skye, May.”

“There’s a reason why I don’t like undercover.”

“I found another grey hair yesterday.”

“So did I.”

“It was less traumatizing than I expected.” Coulson closed his eyes. “The hero of my childhood is back after all these decades. We’re both babes in arms to anyone from Asgard. Truth be told, I haven’t felt this young in years. Here’s to our next half-century.”

“Amen to that.”

FINIS

**Author's Note:**

> The first paragraph quotes "The Prelude", by William Wordsworth (11.108-9).


End file.
